an argument for a presupposition

So I reread mr. gugg's post and thought, "okay, let's see if there is any life in this thing."

Presupposition: God exists.

(I don't know if anyone here actually thinks otherwise, and maybe I'm wasting my time, but hey, what is the chance anyone will read this anyways? If everyone agrees, tell me and I'll move on to another one.)

The shorter form of the argument:

(1) The universe is contingent.
(2) Contingent beings must have a first cause.
(3) That first cause is God.

The longer form of the argument:

If we consider the universe, we find that everything in it bears this mark, that it does exist but might very well not have existed. We ourselves exist, but might very well not have existed. We ourselves exist, but we would not have existed if a man and a woman had not met and mated. The same mark can be found upon everything. A particular valley exists because a stream of water took that way down, perhaps because the ice melted up there. If the melting ice had not been there, there would have been no valley. And so with all the things of our experience. They exist, but they would not have existed if some other thing had not been what it was or done what it did. None of these things, therefore, is the explanation of its own existence or the source of its own existence. In other words, their existence is contingent upon something else. Each thing possesses existence, and can pass on existence; but it did not originate its existence. It is essentially a receiver of existence.

Now it is impossible to conceive of a universe consisting exclusively of contingent beings, that is, of beings which are only receivers of existence and not originators. Such a thing is a contradiction in terms and therefore an impossibility. If nothing exists save beings that receive their existence, how does anything exist at all? Where do they receive their existence from? In such a system made up exclusively of receivers, one being may have got it from another, and that from still another, but how did existence get into the system at all? Even if you tell yourself that this system contains an infinite number of receivers of existence, you still have not accounted for existence. Even an infinite number of beings, if no one of these is the source of its own existence, will not account for existence.

Thus we are driven to see that the beings of our experience, the contingent beings, could not exist at all unless there is also a being which differs from them by possessing existence in its own right. It is not contingent: it simply is. This is the Being that we call God.

But what accounts for His existence? At least we shall not be guilty of the crudity of those who ask: Who made God? For to make anything is to confer existence upon it; and as we have seen, God does no have to receive existence. He is not made, He simply is. He does not come into existence, He is in existence. But the question remains as insistent for Him as for any contingent thing: why does He exist, what accounts for His existence?

God exists not because of any other being, for He is the source of all being. Therefore the reason for His existence, since it is not in anything else, must be in Himself. This means that there is something about what He is which requires that He must be. Now what a being is we call its nature; thus we can rephrase that and say that there is in His nature something that demands existence, better still something that commands existence. In other words His nature is such that He must exist. All contingent beings may exist or may not, but God must exist. He cannot not-exist. Their nature is to be able to exist; God's nature is to exist. They can have existence; God is existence.

For there are not two elements, namely God and His existence. And indeed if they were two, the question would arise, what accounts for their being found together? But they are not two, they are one. God is existence. Existence is. All the receivers of existence exist because there is one who does not have to receive existence. He does not have to receive existence because He is existence.

The end.

Funny

I haven't read or posted anything here in quite a while, but I read this in The Onion and got a kick out of it and thought you all might too. Enjoy:

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

Regarding Debate

After lurking around here for the past few months, I'd like to make an observation.

This is going nowhere, and will continue to do so. It is fascinating and educational in terms of facts--oh yes indeed, I've learned a lot of facts here--so it's quite a diverting corner of the web. But debate isn't about a mere trading of ideas--it's about changing minds, about demonstrating that one way of thinking is superior to the other.

And we're not doing that. No one is changing their mind--not about anything significant--because there are as many presuppositions running around here as there are people. And we're not talking about our presuppositions. Just throwing them at each other. Hence, even when the facts are undisputed (a rare happenstance), we each still have a different take on them. Materialists remain materialists, theists remain theists, and certainly conservatives and liberals persist as they are. For instance, it is fairly clear that MG and Emeryroolz believe that that which can be scientifically detected is all that exists. James and Dave believe that matter isn't all there is. One side says God is not scientifically verifiable and therefore doesn't exist, the other says He exists, and besides, He's immaterial, so He's not scientifically falsifiable. At this point evidence is beside the point. We believe what we believe. All this talk is just an exchange of interesting facts and how we interpret them.

Now don't get me wrong--I'm not just trotting out the tired old "It's all a matter of faith anyway" argument--that's just a fancy way of ending a debate. What I'd much rather see is a real, profitable debate--one that we could actually resolve.

So here's my suggestion. Let's talk presuppositions instead of consequences thereof. Tell me what is a good and valid reason to accept materialism or theism or whatever. Or don't even bother with the good and valid bit--just tell me why you believe whatever you believe. Why do you think your presupposition is the right one?

If any of you already have a prepared answer for the question--heck, if you can even articulate what your fundamental presupposition is, then you're got the jump on the majority of the world, and my hat is off to you.

And if any of you have a reason beyond "That's what my parents believed," or "Duh--the alternative is retarded," then we'll really be getting somewhere (though personally I think the second of those two can be quite a good reason, if considered thoroughly). But any answer is good enough for starters--the point is to talk about the actual differences between us, not merely the consequences thereof.

Until then, we're doing nothing but calling each other idiots in the most high-falutin' ways we can figure. Fun, and somewhat educational, but fairly pointless.

I'm aware that this forum will be moving elsewhere in the near future, and I'll move with it--but to be honest, I'll probably mostly lurk unless these issues are addressed. If no one's going to actually challenge my presuppositions, why should I bother? All I'll learn is facts--a commodity so abundant as to be nearly worthless. Good, workable, resilient presuppositions now--those are worth talking about.

But You Should Probably Read This...

Scroll down. It's about the Coca-Cola ad.

The Great Satan Manufactures Satanic Products

...

If you live in the middle east, invest in Pepsi.

A Brief Sojourn

I'm going to blatantly neglect this blog for a few days, possibly weeks. A random series of non-interconnected events have conspired to make me rather happy. Rather incredibly happy. And, for some odd reason, I don't want to spend as much time gathering invective and throwing it, or talking with people who would do the same.

So, for anyone now participating - carry on, or check back in a few months, because this forum will be moved to a new server, new domain name, and it will not have nearly so much debate as contrasting commentary, and you can accept or reject what you will.

As for me, I'm going to continue with this happiness thing. It's way, way underrated.

Head in the Sand

No disrespect intended, but those who would prefer to make excuses for instead of demand answers from the Bush Administration vis-à-vis torture – they look like this.

Don't worry, it's a comic.

Is This Torture, Too?

The stories cut both ways, it seems.

Is This Torture?

From the Washington Post.

Even if you think it's no big deal to condemn a man to death, is it becoming of a country alleging to spread "freedom" to behave in such a manner?

The Truth and Michael Moore, and Other Odd Couples

Let me begin by saying one thing:

ginobiliginobiliginobiliginobiliginobili

(Let that sink in.)

And now on to Moore. The following was composed yesterday, ere game seven.
____________________________________________________________________________________

Let me state one thing at the outset:

Michael Moore is a genius.
And he is not a liar.

Why, then, do I despise him? Because he is not commited to truth. And yet he isn’t a liar; he’s a deceiver. The difference? Liars tell, and deceivers show.

Take this example, shamelessly pulled from this man, which illustrates the difference rather well:

Jim has a dog for a pet. You have never seen his dog, so you just have to take my word for it that he has a dog at his house. As evidence that Jim has a dog I offer the following facts.

1) There is animal hair all over his couch.
2) There are bowls of food and water in his kitchen.
3) He has a box of Hartz flea collars under his sink.
4) He makes regular trips to the veterinarian.
5) He buys canned pet food once a week.

Pretty compelling evidence of my assertion, right? Well, Jim doesn’t have a dog; Jim has a cat.

It’s pretty damn effective, though, and the conspicuous lack of defamation lawsuits against Moore stand as testimony to either his honesty or his skill in this sort of deceptive manipulation (it’s really hard to prove that a man was engaged in defamation when he makes little to any outright claims; see here and here for definitions of libel and defamation). I aim to show that it’s the latter.

Moore’s tactic is almost always the same: take a case/accusation/claim/what-have-you and selectively report the facts about it so that the case appears to validate his point, when in fact it does not, or doesn’t validate it as strongly as he’d like.

“So?” someone could protest. “Almost all reporters do that!”

Not like this, they don’t.

My favorite example of this is in Bowling for Columbine, in the now infamous Heston speech, “from my cold, dead hands.”

Here’s how it appears in Bowling:

Weeping children outside Columbine;
Cut to Charlton Heston holding a musket and proclaiming "I have only five words for you: 'from my cold, dead, hands'";
Cut to billboard advertising the meeting, while Moore intones "Just ten days after the Columbine killings, despite the pleas of a community in mourning, Charlton Heston came to Denver and held a large pro-gun rally for the National Rifle Association;"
Cut to Heston (supposedly) continuing speech... "I have a message from the Mayor, Mr. Wellington Webb, the Mayor of Denver. He sent me this; it says 'don't come here. We don't want you here.' I say to the Mayor this is our country, as Americans we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land. Don't come here? We're already here!"

Moore has created the following impression: the NRA was blatantly insensitive to the Columbine tragedy, and Heston was/is an ass. Note, however, that he hasn’t said any of these things explicitly.

Here are the things that Moore left out:

1. The “cold, dead hands” speech wasn’t given at Columbine. It was given a year later, in Charlotte, North Carolina.
2. The meeting in Denver, the very one that occurred a mere ten days after Columbine, had been scheduled a year in advance and was required by law (more or less the same law that requires corporations to have an executive meeting once a year to keep their corporation status). The NRA couldn’t move it, as it would require sending out notices to some four million NRA members, any one of which might be coming. So they did the next-best thing – they cancelled all festivities except the meeting required by law.
3. Here is the actual speech Heston gave, which, you will note, is not nearly as insensitive as Moore made it seem. I got this transcript from Moore’s site.
4. The funniest part about this? Heston is wearing two different suits during his “speech,” and talking against two different backgrounds.

Now to Moore’s response, which is here:

I quote, from his site:

From the end of my narration setting up Heston's speech in Denver, with my words, "a big pro-gun rally," every word out of Charlton Heston's mouth was uttered right there in Denver, just 10 days after the Columbine tragedy.

Moore is a genius. He’s right, of course; for his words “big pro-gun ralley” come after Heston says “cold, dead hands.” So he isn’t lying. But his implication is certainly deceptive. He implies that Heston was an ass and that the NRA was blatantly insensitive to the needs of the victims of Columbine. He doesn’t mention at all that the NRA meeting was required by law, or that it had been set up a year in advance, or that most of it had been cancelled except those portions required by law. Those points would hurt the image he’s set up.

(summary here)

Lies? No. Deception, selective editing? Yes. Reprehensible? Well, if you believe George W. Was wrong in implying that the 9/11 attacks came from Iraq (though he never actually said that), then you’d best be consistent and say “yes.”

Let me stress that again – this is the same technique. If you despise one for doing it, you’d better despise the other.

Therein lies what Moore does – put two things close to each other (images, words, etc.) and count on the audience to put two and two together and think it’s one. Let’s take a look at F9/11. The deceptions I’m showing are in no particular order, nor are they necessarily relevant to Moore’s movie as a whole, but they do show that he has sloppy scholarship at best, and uses outright deception at worst.

Moore claims at the beginning of F9/11 that Gore had won, and that Bush stole the election. That can of worms aside, among the evidence he gave in defense of that assertion was a newspaper headline.

The Pantagraph, Latest Florida Recount Shows Gore Won Election

Moore doesn’t state outright that the headline is an actual headline; he just shows it, and the viewer infers that it was, in fact, an actual headline, when it was in fact an editorial that was carefully manipulated to look like a headline. To see just how “carefully” it had to be done, take a look at this comparison of the original and Moore’s video clip.

How about this one, straight from Moore’s website:

The man who was in charge of the decision desk at FOX on election night was Bush’s first cousin, John Ellis.

Right after Moore says this, he cuts to a scene of Bush laughing.

The implication is, of course, that Ellis helped pull the election for Bush. But the claim is only that Bush’s cousin was at the desk, which is the only fact that Moore defends on his website. Any substantial evidence of a conspiracy is conspicuously lacking. And the facts he leaves out?

1. Ellis was a professional election results analyst with 23 years of experience.
2. Ellis worked previously for NBC for 10 years.
3. Eliis actually called the GHW Bush/Clinton election against his uncle, GHW Bush.
4. Ellis was part of a 4 person team of experts , who required a unanimous recommendation before sending it to Moody (one of the experts).
5. John Moody had the final approval / veto power over the recommendation.
6. The data used by Ellis and his team was delivered from VNS (Voter News Service, which was and always has been the first to report the to-the-minute results from the ballot box - in short, Ellis could only know what VNS told him, and all news networks had equal access to VNS. It was only after VNS first called the election for Bush that Fox followed suit.)
7. All of the other news outlets received the same data at the same time.
8. The other news outlets delivered the same results within 4 minutes of Fox’s report.

Read it in full here.

Moore leaves all this out. None of this discounts a conspiracy, but it does make his implied case – that W.’s cousin was working the election – pretty damn threadbare.

This one’s one of my favorites: vacation times.

Moore claims Bush was on vacation 42% of the time. Here is his quote, and his backup for this assertion, straight from his own site:

FAHRENHEIT 9/11: “In his first eight months in office before September 11, George W. Bush was on vacation, according to the Washington Post, forty-two percent of the time.”

· “News coverage has pointedly stressed that W.'s month-long stay at his ranch in Crawford is the longest presidential vacation in 32 years. Washington Post supercomputers calculated that if you add up all his weekends at Camp David, layovers at Kennebunkport and assorted to-ing and fro-ing, W. will have spent 42 percent of his presidency ‘at vacation spots or en route.’” Charles Krauthammer, “A Vacation Bush Deserves,” The Washington Post, August 10, 2001.

Read that carefully.

Weekends.

I’m not sure what Moore is doing here, or if perhaps he’s hoping no one will read his own site. But no organization, company, corporation, what-have-you in the country that I know of counts weekends as vacation days. Note also that there is a HUGE difference in “vacation” and “vacation spots or en route” (and “layovers,” which is the funniest to my mind, because they’re obviously not vacations) which is what Moore’s evidence actually says. The difference is, of course, is that places like Camp David qualify as vacation spots, but the president works there. That’s where he holds most of his meetings with foreign officials – at this point in the movie, for that matter, is a shot of Bush at Camp David talking with Tony Blair.

Point? Again, Moore’s implication is that the President wasn’t working as he should have been. And that may well be true. But the evidence he gives is selective and misleading. The facts that Moore left out of his movie – that “42%” can only be held up when you calculate any and all time physically out of the office – hurts that assertion.

Try this one – Moore approached members of the US Senate and asked them if they’d like to sign their kids up to fight (I could go on at length about the stupidity of this maneuver in the first place, since the military is voluntary and no one, repeat, no one sends their kids to die. But I won’t). Moore carefully cut out the response of at least one senator:

Kennedy: Sure! How can I help?

But he put the rest of the footage in, making Kennedy look like an idiot. In the final cut, Kennedy gives Moore a quizzical look, and then the scene changes.

Again, his point may still stand, that there weren’t many wealthy soldiers fighting in Iraq, or that the Government had carefully protected their own. But in lieu of using a great deal of evidence from those senators, he chose instead to splice Kennedy’s speech. He chose to deceive rather than make a good argument.

It’s late, and I want to get to the bar in time to get a seat for the playoffs. But I’ll update this as time goes by – I’ve certainly left a lot out, including the pipeline in Afghanistan that never materialized, the bin Laden family saying that Moore got facts wrong, etc.

As for what I’ve posted here, MG – please tell me how this is in any way defensible, or refute it.

Torture, and a Summation of the Pertaining Arguments

First off, I invite MG to take a look at what will be the beginning of a long series of arguments against the reliability of Michael Moore. More will come, as time and need permit.

I'm also going to chime in (later) on the idea that fundamentalist Moslem terrorists do not like the US because of our foreign policy. MG has made a statement to that effect (though he didn't mention Moslem fundamentalists specifically), and I used to believe it myself. But I now think it's wrong, and am firmly of the belief that the longevity of the Moslem memory for crimes against Islam automatically removes any pretense of living in peace with fundamentalist Islam. (Example - the reconquista of Spain is something that many fundamentalist Moslems still get angry about, even though it happened in the 1400s, and only as a response to the Moslem conquest of Spain in the 700s.) The evidence I've seen suggests that the worldview held by fundamentalists is one that doesn't allow for lasing peace with infidels. And if that's true, and if the fundamentalists have the kind of hold on the middle east that the Right would have you think, then the policy of uprooting governments and replacing them with democracies may not be such a bad idea after all.

Anyway, more on that later. On to torture.

Given that the debate over torture seems to have reached a standstill, I'm going to take this opportunity to summarize the arguments thus far and then ask a few more questions.

Let's first remove the tangental arguments that have been made, which I believe are quite irrelevant to the question of torture as a whole:

1. Bush did/didn't condone the torture, and so he is/isn't responsible for what happened.
2. A great many/great few have died, whether as a result of torture or natural causes ("natural" causes including, say, a bullet to the chest, provided it was inflicted during battle).
3. The Geneva Convention does not apply to the prisoners being held.
4. Koran desecration, which is not torture, nor should it ever be considered torture.

To the first point:

Whether Bush authorized or did not authorize torture is quite irrelevant to the fact that it seems to have happened on his watch. And with a job like the presidency, with that high a profile, you are always responsible for what goes on. My favorite example of this sort of responsibility comes from work, where I've had a few run-ins with a cook who couldn't quite prepare food with the requisite amount of speed. He held everyone up when we got busy. People yelled at him, of course, and his response was inevitably, "I didn't ask for this, okay? My screen just filled up. Give me a break."

To which my response was always, "no." You did ask for this, inasmuch as you decided you wanted to be a cook. Working this hard and taking this kind of crap is part and parcel of what a cook is and does. If you don't like it, go somewhere else, but don't claim that you're surprised that you had to do this kind of work.

Point is, if you're taking the presidency, you shouldn't be surprised by anything that goes on under your watch, nor should you be surprised when you're asked to take responsibility for it. No amount of claiming that it was unauthorized will absolve the presidency from responsibility in the eyes of the rest of the world. And given that politics is very much a popularity contest, as much as it is a contest for who has the best ideas, a scandal like Abu Ghraib is a serious losing blow.

In short, keep tabs on your men. And if you find that they're hurting your cause, stop them.

To the second point:

The issue isn't how many have died from torture, and I don't think we'll get anywhere arguing numbers. One is obviously too many, and even if no one has died, that doesn't discount the use of torture. Numbers are a good reliability indicator, to be sure (i.e., if many have died, it makes torture that much more likely), but given that we have pictures, testimony, etc., I recommend that we address those instances instead of arguing over numbers, which are a great deal more vague.

To the third point:

James is right about the Geneva Convention - inasmuch as Al Qaida was the declared enemy, the Geneva Convention does not apply. The United States, however (as far as I know), hasn't used that argument in their defense. What they have consistently done is denied the use of authorized torture. Bringing in the Geneva Convention at this point is somewhat irrelevant, for if the US is telling the truth, it's not needed, and if the US is lying...well, then the torture is obviously something that the government wants swept under the rug, and therefore arguments about Geneva's applicability wouldn't be of much use.

To the fourth point:

With all due respect to the Moslem community...please. Koran desecration, though it might confine one to an eternity in hell, is not torture. What irks me most about these outcries is the way they appear when placed against the lack of outcries against Saddam Hussein, who desecrated the Koran in the worst way possible - writing it in blood.

In short, no arguments about Koran desecration, please. I'm of the humble opinion that crying about the handling of a holy book is fruitless, and most certainly distracts from questions of real torture.

Thus far, we have sporatic reports of torture going on. I'd like the following questions/statements addressed:

The US government has not made a significant effort to show that it is taking great care to avoid torture. In my opinion, they should, given that a censure of this sort from the rest of the world is something that the US should avoid, if it can. (Note that I haven't even asked anything about the truth of the reports yet.) Anyone who wishes to respond to that, please do so.

The government has not made a great effort to broadcast the utter barbarism of the "insurgents," terrorists, etc. (Check the link at the right to Michael Yon, currently in Iraq, for plenty of examples.) The best example I can think of off the top of my head is the utter lack of pictures showing "insurgents" using civilians as human shields. The maneuver was well-documented, and yet no one thought it wise to take pictures. Something like this would have been a great counter to scenes of carnage reported by Aljazeera. In short, where is the great smear campaign against the enemy that we all know the government is capable of?

And finally, on the truth of the allegations...

Well, comment any way you like on those. But I'd also like suggestions about where the US went wrong, and what we might do now to stop ourselves from falling deeper into trouble. I realize MG has already answered this to an extent (in short, "don't have foreign policy that pisses people off"), but I'd like him to chime in on specific instances, why they occurred, and how they might be prevented.